In the four years I have been sharing my expertise on how to prevent helmet-crown related injuries in football, there has been an increase of concussion awareness here on MomsTeam and all over the country. But such steps as baseline concussion testing are meaningless if the cause of the initial concussion is not addressed, because the player will suffer a more severe concussion without identifying the cause.

The warning label on the back of every Riddell helmet states, "It is a violation of football rules to strike an opponent with any part this helmet or face mask, doing so can cause you to suffer a severe brain, neck or spinal injury including paralysis or death and may cause injury to your opponent. Brain, neck and spinal injuries can happen accidentally in football. no helmet can prevent all such injuries, you use this helmet at your own risk"

The statement implies that there is indeed a way to tackle without using the crown or top of the helmet, but what it doesn't tell you is that it is up to the coaches and players to find that out exactly how!

To do that requires due diligence on the part of every parent, first to make sure that before they sign up their child for a football program that it is HELMET-FREE-TACKLE Certified, and, second, if it isn't, why not.

There is no longer a debate: hitting with the CROWN of the helmet poses an immediate and long term threat to the health and well-being of every child that plays football. There is no longer any debate that there is a solution to the problem of brain and spine injuries in football, and that SOLUTION is to VERIFY that EVERY coach can readily IDENTIFY and train players to AVOID the bio-mechanics, tackling techniques, tackling drills and tackling terminology that leads directly to CROWN-first collisions when defenders are making tackles. If coaches cannot identify these problems they should not be allowed to coach anybody's child on any level of football competition.

Being a volunteer football coach does not mean you have the right to be incompetent. Train Up the Coach so he can properly Train Up the Players. To do otherwise is to put children unecessarily in harms way, and that is simply inexcusable.